RideLust

A 2010 Toyota Prius. Image: Toyota

Remember last month, when I told you that the NHTSA and NASA had issued their findings on the whole Toyota unintended acceleration debacle? To summarize, NASA reviews some 280,000 lines of code relating to acceleration commands, and could find no instance where a short or other malfunction could create an instance of unintended acceleration. The NHTSA (and even Toyota’s biggest opponent, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood) supported these findings, and agreed that there were only two causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota models. The first to be identified was “pedal entrapment”, caused when the accelerator pedal stuck in an open position, jammed by the floor mat. The final cause identified was a sticking acceleration pedal assembly, which Toyota has since corrected via a series of recalls. Other instances of unintended acceleration, based on the data available, were found to be caused by pedal confusion, which is a polite way of saying “operator error”.

Not so fast, say the plaintiffs involved in a class action lawsuit against Toyota. The group disputes Toyota’s findings, on the grounds that NASA reviewed only 280,000 lines of code, out of a possible eight million lines of code. I suppose it doesn’t matter that the vast majority of that code has nothing to do with systems relating to engine speed control, or perhaps the group thinks that simultaneously activating the cigarette lighter, windshield washer and reverse lights could cause unintended acceleration. The group promises to bring in their own experts, with findings that contradict NASA. Let’s just hope they’re more credible then the last batch of “experts”, who created unintended acceleration by re-wiring the ECU to suit their agenda.

Source: Bloomberg, via, Autoblog